ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am thankful to Atlantic International University School of Business and Economics for giving me an opportunity to pursue Doctorate in Marketing.

I would also like to thank my guide and my perpetual source of inspiration Dr. Gilroy Newball and Dr. Cyndy Domingues for their valuable mentoring and inputs. Their constant support and invaluable advice has always guided me towards the right direction. They helped me to know various phenomenon’s related to the research practices which further gave an impetus to channelize my study in an appropriate way. I sincerely thank them for their treasured guidance without which this dissertation would have never been possible.

I am also grateful to “Mr. Harpreet Singh Randhawa - Executive Director - Stallion Group of Companies” for helping me in every stage of this achievement.

Lastly, I express my deep sense of gratitude to the almighty, my family members, friends & colleagues who have directly and indirectly helped me in this dissertation.

ABSTRACT

The business environment is drastically revolving and changing, so is the tools employed in decision making process. The changing business environment require that organisation achieve more customer satisfaction, exceed shareholder’s expectation, integrated and harmonize all stakeholders’ interest to remain competitive. With the growth in the internet users and application since the last three decades, organization have started shifting focus from offline marketing to online in reaching out to more customers. Online marketing is therefore not seen by many scholars as another form of promotional tools like advertising, personal selling, direct marketing among others but seen as a powerful medium of implementing the various marketing tools online to reach more targeted local and global audience.

This research work investigated the effectiveness of online marketing on integrated marketing communication strategy. Specifically, the work aimed at assessing the extent online platform improves the effectiveness of integrated marketing communication strategy. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher employed descriptive survey where the marketing/sales department officers of three organization were sampled to collect relevant information regarding the effectiveness of online marketing in actualizing the goal of integrated marketing communication. The organization sampled includes Coca-Cola Nigeria (multinational firm), Uber Nigeria (multinational Firm) and ABC paint (domestic firm) in carrying out the study.

Information was obtained from the respondents using questionnaire instrument of data collection using 5 point Likert Scale. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, Skewness etc) and frequencies (percentages, table and graph). From the research findings, it was revealed that online marketing is effective in integrated marketing communication strategy of the organisation by increasing the brand awareness, improves customer satisfaction, easy integration and management, and facilitates automation of marketing activities. It was equally revealed that integrated marketing online effectiveness can be measured using a number of metrics including consumer interaction on site, number of repeated visit, sales volume and profits among others. The researcher also discovered that the trending online marketing tools employed by most organisation includes, e-mail marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, artificial intelligence and chartbot among others.

It is therefore recommended among others that organizations need to employ various artificial intelligence technology to gather as much information as they can about their customer needs, psychographic, geographic and demographic information to determine what marketing strategy and medium will appeal most to the targeted customers and channel more of the marketing effort towards such direction.

Topic: Study of the Effectiveness of online marketing on integrated marketing communication.

LIST OF TABLE

Table 1: Characterristics of IMC Promotional tools:

Table 2: Computation of Benchmark Mean

Table 3: Respondent Gender distribution:

Table 4: Respondent Marital Status:

Table 5: Respondent Age distribution:

Table 6: Respondent Years of Experience distribution:

Table 7: Respondent Educational Qualification distribution:

Table 8: Respondents summary statistics:

Table 9: Respondent Response Summary:

Table 10: Respondent Response Summary:

Table 11 : Summary response of the Effectiveness of Online marketing:

Table 12: Summary statistics of the Trending Online marketing tools:

LIST OF FIGURE

Figure 1: Artificial Intelligence:

Figure 2: Philosophical World View:

Figure 3: Philosophical World View:

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 Introduction

The global economy and the corporate world has witnessed tremendous changes in the last three decades with technology advancement particularly information technology. ICT has continued to revolutionize the way we do business, interact and live. Information technology has disrupted the business world and have rendered most outstanding theory and principle of marketing invalid and irrelevant such that any organisation that fail to embrace technological advancement and innovation in information technology will have no place to compete in the twenty first century business environment (Preeti, 2018; Belch & Belch, 2004).

Google (2007) argued that the proportion of people having access to the internet is growing yearly by an average of 3.8 percent more than the growth rate in the world population. Belch & Belch (2004) further noted that the internet has been growing rapidly more than 10 times both in its application and users since the 1980s largely because of its imbedded features including flexibility, personalization and interactivity. Information technology has bridge the many difficult gaps existing in the organisation in the past thereby driving the profitability of the organisation in today’s competitive environment (Devi & Konti, 2011). Information technology can be employed as a tool to reach global audience at a minimized cost and has contributed more than 50 percent in the successful integration of the global economy (Devi & Konti, 2011).

Every strategic tools of the organisation to achieve competitive advantage in today’s competitive business environment must incorporate one or more aspect of the information technology. This is partly because it enables an integrated and coordinated mechanism of sharing information across the partners and audience involved in the implementation of a strategy. As argued by Preeti (2018) information technology has revolutionaiized the means at which organisation communicate to both existing and prospective customers, increasing return on investment and reduce cost of reaching out to the customers. Weinstein (2008) argued that the rapid growth in the role of internet in the success of business are influnced by a number of activities including easy access to the web, low cost of accesssing the web, reduced cost of communication, favourable policy that encourage internet usage, rise in technology among others. ICT has provided a better platform to reach customer within the locality and global market at ease and the process of reaching the customer through the internet is called online marketing.

Online marketing or e-marketing as often referred to all marketing activities carried out online to reach the customers as opposed to the traditional way of reaching the customer like print media, sales promotion, adverts on tv and on radio (Goldfarb, 2011). Weinstein (2008) is of the view that online marketing is the promotion of organisation products through digital or electronic platform. Such as any promotion made on social media, mobile phones, digital television & radio sites as well as digital banners on various websites. Thus, internet marketing uses online platform to deliver promotional marketing message to consumers (Pawar, 2014). The platform of advertising in online as noted by Pawar (2014) include e-mail marketing, social media marketing, mobile phone marketing, search engine marketing, and banner advertising.

As argued by Devi & Konti (2011) online marketing bring the organisation products closer to the customer regardless of the location in the world as long as the customers have access to the internet. It provides organisation opportunity to understand customers behaviour better, widening the products distribution channels, boosts sales, track real time data of marketing performace, among others. Edosomwan, Kouame, Prakasan, Seymour, & Watson (2011) argued further that the power of online marketing comes from the fact that it gives the organisation wider access to variety of potential customers across the globe. Giving the fact that more than 1.5 billion people uses the internet world wide, and more are joining on daily basis, online therefore provide the greatest platform to reach wide range of customers in the world. Similarly, intenet allow the organisation to stay connected with the customers (old and prospective) in real time. The internet provide platform to send messages to all customer simultaneously of any upcoming event, sales promo and many more faster and at a minimal cost.

Gone are the days the organisation wait for any general meeting to get feedback from the customers regarding their marketing performance or products, with the internet the organisation get feedback from customer in real time, track product performance in real time as well as modify a product based on data collected in real time. Online integration of organisation products and services has saved the organisation time and resources as corporate bodies now provide a detail information regarding a product and service on the internet and customers are guided through accessing the information rather than bombadding the customer section with series of quemes (Belch & Belch, 2004). Given the fact that online are becoming the most prominient medium of entertainment and communication, average working class individuals spend more time on the internet replacing the outdated information sharing mediums. Online marketing therefore provide a better, faster, more reliable, more economical, more profitable platform to reach more target audience within the shortest time frame and providing the organisation opportunity to achieve more at a lesser time frame (Pieton & Broderick, 2005)ľ

Online marketing has create a niche in the organisation competitive strategy as it can integrate responsive marketing strategy and adapt easily to all other marketing and promotional strategies of the organisation targeted at boosting sales, gaining competitive advantage, and achieving customer satisfaction (Edosomwan, Kouame, Prakasan, Seymour, & Watson, 2011 ). The uniqueness and fundamental role of online marketing can be further explored when looking at its potential in effective integration of marketing communication. Preeti (2018) noted that as the global economy is driving towards an integrated market where all consumers and producers are connected together at a matter of click. The organisation are repositioning themselves to take advantage of e-marketing towards enhacing the integrated marketing communication to reach wider audience at a time.

The role of online marketing in achieving the objective of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) has continued to gain wider discussion among scholar and practitionals (Weinstein, 2008; Preeti, 2018; Rahul, 2016). IMC stem from the need for effective coordination of organisation marketing communication strategies in a clear, concise, credible, competitive and consistent manner that facilitates the sharing of a clear message about the organisation products and services (Ekhlassi, Maghsoodi, & Mehrmanesh, 2012). As apointed out by Belch & Belch (2004) the fact that marketing environment are becoming highly competitive and the once disaggregated marketing environment is losing out to the integrated and coordinated marketing strategy where corporate leaders are flexible to combine approaches allowing brands speak with a one voice across different media outreach.

Integrated marketing communication is therefore defined as organisation effort to integrate, combine, synthesize, allign different element of marketing mix with the intent that each of the communication platform will reinforce each other for optimal performance. Ekhlassi, Maghsoodi, & Mehrmanesh (2012) opined that integrated marketing communication is a system of marketing that ensure all forms of communication and messages of organisation products and services are properly linked together in a complementary manner. It is therefore the act of harmonising the various promotional tools of the organisation to ensure consistence and unity in their message. The authors noted further that as marketing has its own 4 p’s, promotion has its own mixs also.

In capturing the definition of IMC, Shultz (2004) noted that integrated marketing communication is strategic business approach employed in planning, developing, executing, measuring, evaluating, coordinating and a persuasive brand communication programs with consumers, customers, prospective customers, suppliers, and every other stakeholders to the organisation. Orasmäe (2017) noted that all of the communication tools work better if they are integrated together in unity rather than working in isolation. Their sum is greater than their parts, provided they speak with one voice at all time (Orasmäe, 2017). Caemmerer (2009) reenforce the view of Orasmäe (2017) when the author noted that IMC is a marketing strategy that integrate all form of marketing tools to work together in a harmonized and cosistent way rather than implemented in islation. The author noted further that IMC combine all the marketing efforts including advertising, personal selling, public relation, online marketing, sales promotion with the intent of generating more impact on the targeted audience at a minimized cost (Caemmerer, 2009).

Caemmerer (2009) noted that integrated marketing communication is an approach employed by the organisation to manage the essential relationship between employees, customers, and shareholders with the intent of sending unified message across boards in order to maximize the impact of the promotion on the targeted audience. As such, the author pointed out that for a sucessful marketing communication strategy, the IMC must observe series of steps including recognizing a clear targeted audience, setting communication goals and objectives, creating the message, planning an integrated communication strategy and developing a framework that clearly deliver the organisation message to the audience.

Kotler and Armstrong (2012) argued that an organisation has five major available communication means it often employed in sharing the message about the organisation products to its customers, stakeholders and the general public. Historically, traditional organisations have always seen the various marketing promotional tools as a responsibility of different department within the organisation, thereby never see the need for integrated marketing communication (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012). As Kotler & Armstrong (2012) noted this approach makes it difficult to work towards a unified voice in the organisation marketing message thereby creating more difficulties aligning the marketing strategy with the overall organisation strategy. Belch & Belch (2004) noted that integrated marketing strategy arise out of the need to integrate the already disintegrated marketing communication in the various organisation.

At first, IMC was conceptualized as a mere managerial task aimed at aligning and coordinating organisational promotional message through four aspect including, sales promotion, direct marketing communication, public relation, and advertising. At this point, the aim was to achieve consistence and a common front in the communication message to the targeted audience (Ekhlassi, Maghsoodi, & Mehrmanesh, 2012; Kotler & Armstrong, 2012; Caemmerer, 2009). Kotler & Armstrong (2012) pointed out that IMC when well approached drive a coordinated message to the customer and prospective which is intended to influnce their behaviour towards the organisation products and maintain loyalty. Since the introduction of IMC in marketing management, it has enjoyed considerable acceptance among scholars and practioners.

Of course there are several reason that prompted the rise in integrated marketing communication among practioners including but not limited the need for an overhaul allocation of organisation marketing expenditure from the existing traditional promotional means to other entising promotional means like trade oriented sales promotion, lower cost and more targeted tools including event marketing, direct mails, spornsor ads and extensive exploration of the internet for advertising purpose (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012; Weinstein, 2008). On the importance of integrated marketing communication as an approch to marketing, Belch & Belch (2004) argued that IMC if well planned will bring about several advantages over the traditional disaggregated approach to both clients and customers. It is believed that IMC will assist the organisation to maximize returns on investment, reduce cost, speak with one voice, improves organisation understanding about the complexities of its environment and harmonise them. The growth and development of database marketing also contributes to the development of of effective integrated marketing communication.

With the help of ICT organisation easily collect wide array of customers name, geographic disposition, demographic, psychographic profile; media preferences, purchase behaviour among other necessary information that provide clues to the organisation in designing their marketing communication message (Orasmäe, 2017). Also, the increase in the demand for more accountability from advertising agencies and modification in the means of compesating advert companies have also promoted the rise in integrated marketing communication. Most organisation are tying the payment or compesation of their advertising agencies to the performance of product, or the achievement of targeted objectives such as sales increase, improvement in market share, and increasing profitability. Ekhlassi, Maghsoodi, & Mehrmanesh (2012) noted that the fact that online marketing facilitates better integration of the various promotional tools of the organisation to work in harmony towards achieving the overall objectives makes online marketing an indispensable tool in actualizing effective integrated marketing communication in the organisation.

There are several ways in which information technology or the internet is facilitating better and effective marketing communication across organisation (Pawar, 2014). With online marketing we could sponsor events to raise awareness about its existence, we can use e-mails to responds to enquiry or complaints, among others. With online marketing in IMC framework, we can rely on our website to provide platform for registration or application for the organisation promotional offers or even serve as medium where we can provide customers, prospective customers and the stakeholders information regarding the organisation products and service (Kliatchko J. , 2005). With online marketing organisation can establish relationship with many of its numerous customers in their various social media handle. Information on the performance of their product, review and weaknesses of the products are received and evaluated at their various social media handles. For instance, facebook page provides a platform for organisation to interact with several customers at the same time understand their feeling about the products and services what need be done and what should be modified.

As argued by Pawar (2014) online marketing provides easy integration of the various promotional tools and makes them speak a consistent message thereby increasing trust on organisation products and services. Online marketing further provides platform of stage by stage appealing to different categories of customers with what appeal them most. Organisation are easily able to use online marketing tool like e-mail marketing to target various customers with different buying behaviours thereby making the marketing tools more effective. Infact, this has become Amazon most perwerful tools in marketing its products to its numerous customers. Orasmäe (2017) noted that in a competive and busy world, the more unified and clear an organisation message is the better their chance of cutting through the various noice that the customers are bombarded with on daily basis.

It is however noted that organisation cannot properly utilize online marketing to achieve strategic and effective integrated marketing communication without proper understanding of the performance of the various promotional tools of the organisation on the online platform. This research will provide answer to some important question that borders on the effectiveness of online marketing in achieving effective integrated marketing commmunication in Nigeria.

1.2 Research Questions

This research seek to find answer to the question, to what extent can online marketing improves the effectiveness of organisation integrated marketing communication strategy in reaching the targeted audience? Answer to this question is important as it will provide the organisation the needed information on step by step process of implementing an integrated marketing communication online, and the expected result. Specifically, the research will be embarked to provide answers to the following research questions:

i. To what extent can online marketing be effective in achieving organisation marketing strategy?
ii. To what extent does integrated marketing communication are effective in achieving organisation marketing strategy?
iii. How effective can online marketing be in achieving effective and efficient integrated marketing communication in the organisation?
iv. What are the key indicators used in measuring online marketing communication performance?
V. What are the trending online marketing tools employed by organisation to reach more targeted audience and accomplish more result?

1.3 Research Objectives

The guiding objectives of the study is derived from the overall or guiding research question. As such, this research aim at examining the extent online marketing impacts and improves the effectiveness of integrated marketing communication in reaching the targeted audience. The research will aim at achieving the following specific objectives:

i. To determine the extent online marketing can be effective in achieving organisation marketing strategy.
ii. To examine the extent integrated marketing communication can be effective in achieving organisation marketing strategy.
iii. To ascertain the effectiveness of online marketing in achieving effective and efficient integrated marketing communication in the organisation.
iv. To examine the key indicators used in measuring online marketing communication performance.
V. To examine the trending online marketing tools employed by organisation to reach more targeted audience and accomplish more result.

1.4 Justification for the study

The fact that the global economy and the corporate world have been very integrated by information technology require the exploration of online marketing as an improved platform to effectively integrate marketing communication across organisation. As noted earlier, online marketing provides platform for the organisation to integrate various promotional tools of the organisation in advertising the organisation products to the customers and the general public. Online marketing as noted by Goldfarb (2011) provides the organisation the opportunity to measure the performance of the promotional tools in real time on the basis of demographic, geographic, psychographic of the targeted audience.

Organisation are able to measure, control, determine and evaluates the performance of the advertising agencies and companies and determine whether there is justification for the resources expended in the marketing communication strategy. This provide more profit maximization and cost minimization for the organisation as organisation spend on what matters most, on the most important customers or audience. The fact that online marketing provides the organisation opportunity to speaks with a consistent voice across the various platform in the global market makes the general public and existing customer to easily assess the objectives of the organisation facilitating their decision making about the organisation products (Devi & Konti, 2011; Caemmerer, 2009).

It is disheartning to note however, that despite the numerous advantages and benefits that goes with integration of marketing communication online, many organisation are yet to embrace online integrated marketing communication as a clear marketing strategy to reach a more targeted audience, maximize profit and minimize cost. Pawar (2014) noted that the slow embracement of online integrated marketing communication by most organisation can be attributed to lack of understanding of the benefit and knowledge of online integrated marketing communication. The need to investigate the effectiveness of online marketing in integrated marketing communication is further reenforced by the fact that the global economy is largely driven today by information technology which has resulted to keen and highly competive business environment.

Study of this nature will therefore provides corportate leaders with information on the performance of online marketing in reaching the targeted audience, the step by step process of integrating online marketing with the organisation integrated marketing communication strategy. And will serve as reference point for other academic researchers.

1.5 Scope of the study

This study will cover online marketing and its role in improving integrated marketing communication in the organisation. The study will cover three organisation in Lagos mainland, Nigeria, including Coca-Cola Nigeria, Uber Nigeria and ABC paint. The choice of these three organisations are determined by several factors as discussed in the methodology. The methodology section will provide detail discussion of the sample population and the study area and jsutification for their choice.

1.6 Structure of Thesis

The thesis will be divided into six chapters. The first chapter will provide introduction the study and guiding objectives of the study. The second chapter will provide the literature review, where the researcher will review what has been done and identify what is yet to be done as regards with the topic. Chapter three will review the internet facilitates the effectiveness of integrated marketing, how the success of integrated marketing communication online can be measured, and lastly a review of the trends in online marketing approach employed by top organisations in the world. Chapter four will discuss the methodology adopted for the research work while chapter five will present and discuss the data collected in the course of the research. And lastly, chapter six will provide conclusion and policy recommendation for corporate leaders and marketing managers on process of sucessfully integrating online marketing in organisation I MC.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction

This chapter will focus on literature review of online marketing and integrated marketing communication. This section of the research is important given the growth of intenet users all

over the world and how online marketing has continued to shape the orgnisation competitive advantage. The interesting thing is that every organisation engages in business for the purpose of making profit in the longrun. To achieve this, organisation from time to time employ different promotional tools to communicate their products and services to the targeted audience. How best they are able to combine and utilize the different promotional tools determine the extent they can achieve their long term goal of profit maximization (Devi & Konti, 2011). The fact that more people are spending their time online and at different places implies that organisation different promotional tools can be effectively integrated online to achieve maximum impact on the targeted audience.

2.1 Online Marketing: An Overview

Advancement in information technology (ICT) have made online advertisement indispensable for an organisation to achieve competitive advantage in any industry (Fang & Mykytyn, 2007). Marketing in its basic meaning is the promotion of organisation products and services to the general public with intent of wooing more customers and ensuring customer loyalty to the brand. Percy (2008) viewed marketing as a process of discovering or assessing societal needs, designing and developing products or service to meet those needs as well as making councious effort to influnce consumer to discover those products and services offered. It involve keen evaluation of organisation products and services, the demographic, geographic and psychographic of the consumer to determine which products and services to offer to different individuals at each point in time (Percy, 2008).

As observed by Jennifer (2001) marketing is a collective medium with which individuals or group of individuals can collectively exchange goods and services based on their needs and wants. This medium was first presented by Neil Borden in 1953 which is known today as marketing mix - place, promotion, price and product. Kotler & Armstrong (2012) observed that the marketing mix are collection of different tools employed by the organisation to achieve the marketing plan. Marketing activities in the 1980’s and 1990’s have been dominated by traditional marketing mix offline, with the advent of the internet, the focus of marketing has shifted to online marketing. This thesis will be more concerned with online marketing and its role in achieving effective integrated marketing communication.

Online marketing basically is every marketing activities that takes place on the internet. Jennifer (2001) noted that online marketing can be reffered as any promotional activities of the organisation that uses internet to deliver the message to the consumers or the general public. Online marketing can be of different form including e-mail marketing, display advertising (different form of banner advert), search engine marketing, mobile advertising, social media advertising, among others. Online marketing involves two principal parties, the publisher who provide the other party, the advertiser platform to advertise its products or services on its content (Jennifer R. , 2001; Edosomwan, Kouame, Prakasan, Seymour, & Watson, 2011). Online marketing is all marketing activities carried out online to reach the customers as opposed to the traditional way of reaching the customer like print media, sales promotion, adverts on tv and on radio (Goldfarb, 2011). Weinstein (2008) observed that online marketing is the promotion of organisation products through digital or electronic platform. Such as any promotion made on social media, mobile phones, digital television & radio sites as well as digital banners on various websites (Hughes & Fill, 2006; Helen, 2018).

Kotler & Armstrong (2012) noted that online marketing is more of piece of direct advertising that provide information about organisation products and try to build connection between the clients. The objective is to establish a strong image of the organisation products and services in the mind of the consumers persuading the consumer to become organisation brand loyalist. The origin of online marketing can be traced to the 1990’s when there is transformation in the information technology and increase application of the internet to facilitates business objectives. At this period, online marketing was not really seen as advertising medium but rather a means of sharing e-mails, digitals information and organising organisation profile and customers. However, with the rise in the use and application of internet in our daily life, where millions of people spend bunch of their time online searching for information, marketing managers started seen the potentials in advertising online (Belch & Belch, 2004).

Advertising agencies then started incorporating different banners and ads regarding organisation products and services in their publications. It wasn’t long that organisations especially the tech giants started realizing the potential benefits of using e-mail to market their products to their customers in a costless effort. Search engine like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ask.com began utilizing the traffic searching for information in advertising organisations products and services (Pawar, 2014). With time, the advertising agencies or companies keep modifying till 2000’s when consumers are given power to easily unsubscribe from advertising messages, invitational marketing were also introduced, recommendation of enticing products based on consumer purchase history. A major shift occurs again with the introduction of blogging, and relational based marketing, small entrepreneurs are able to publish different contents that interest the public, attract visitors across the globe and are rewarded for the traffic by advertising agnecies. Online advertising therefore create significant opportunity to several individuals to earn living at the confort of their home while organisation are able to reach large targeted audience at minimized cost of advertising compared to the formal traditional offline advertising. Online advertising are of various categories as will be discussed below.

2.2 Forms/Types of Online Marketing

There are various medium as noted earlier that marketing can be carried out on the internet. In this sub-section we shall evaluates few of the categories and there success stories.

2.2.1 Display Advertising

This is the earliest form of advertising on the internet and still remain among the most popular advertising tool employed in the internet especially in blogs and non-advertising agencies website. It is a type of advertising platform that incorporate the advertising company message in the form of text, image, animation, videos, logos and other enticing graphic that easily capture the attention of the consumers. Display advertising as noted by Pawar (2014) target consumers or audience with similar traits and needs to appeal to their needs thereby increasing advertising impact. Advertising agencies rely so much on cookies which are unique information collected based on the history of individuals browsing therbey making it easy to target and serve the Customers with adverts from organisation they often visits. Display advertising can be in various form.

2.2.1.1 Banner Advertising

This happen to be the most relevant and popular display advertising platform. Banner ads are often displayed on the web page and its comes in rich format of different color and size. It incorporate not just image which is the most popular, it also comes in the form of video, audio, animation button, logos and many others. Pawar (2014) observed that banner advert return on investment are basically measured in two form, the brand awareness (Robinson, Wysocka, & Hand, 2007; Markova, Prajova, & Salgovicova, 2011), where organisation brand name and message are important to consumers. Secondly, the extent of interaction with the ads (click through rate, CTR). Robinson, Wysocka, & Hand (2007) noted that the more people click through the adverts the more value the advertiser is offering the organisation. The author noted further that empirical findings have revealed that the higher the size of banner ad, the better the ad perform in terms of conversion rate. Though, the author was unable to highlight whether the asssertion is true for placing the banner at all section of the website. Given the fact that some earlier studies finds no evidence to support banner size on the performance of the ads (Rettie, Grandcolas, & McNiel, 2004).

2.2.1.2 Pop-Up Advertising

Though appear to be annoying sometimes, it still appear to be the most effective display advertising tools. A pop-up is described as a new web page displayed above the current web page the internet user is surfing currently. This could be pop-up under where the advert is displyed in a new web page below the one currently being surfed or pop-in where the content the internet user is seeking is blurred or temporarily blurred to pave way for the advert. In some website, the pop-up often display when the visitors scroll down to a certain level or when attempting to exist the web page (Pawar, 2014; Markova, Prajova, & Salgovicova, 2011). Overtime most web browser and aintivirus software have implemented codes that block several pop-up adverts based on the fact that most internet users feels that some of the pop­up are annoying to them.

There are other several display ads that worth mentioning including, floating ads which float over the web page for some temporal period or closed by the website user. Another one is what is refrred as trick ad where the individuals are being tricked into clicking the advert because of where it placed or mixing it with the content the user is surfing. Though, it has high conversion rate but its impact on advertiser revenue is minimal. Another popular ad is that of text ad which uses text or text phrase to advertise and is linked to the advertiser content. Although, as argued by Robinson, Wysocka, & Hand (2007) it easy to incorporate and can be used in e-mail and text messages.

2.2.2 Search Engine Advertising

This kind of advertising is common among the search engine organisations like Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Ask.com among others who often display sponsored adverts outside the normal search engine results pages. The search engine organisation normally places ads along with the result to differentiate it from the non-sponsored SERPs. It is one of the most prominent and highly profitable advertising platform for organisation that provide specific services. Sometimes, an individual might type “where to fix sun glass” and Google will display various office address that fix glass for nonsponsored and below it or above it display the sponsored ads. Most internet users that visited the web page are likely to demand for the organisation service if the ads content is well placed.

As observed by Rappaport (2007) search engine advertising effectiveness depends on the proper capturing of the message displayed in the search engine. An orgnisation selling phone will covert more visitor if the message read “buy Samsung galaxy” than Samsung galaxy informatiom. The word buy has already inform the buyer that visiting the website should be based on the desire need to buy the phone.

2.2.3 Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising has become one of the most popular advertising platform with facebook being a leading advertising earners in the world after Google (Ovijidus, 2018). Pawar (2014) observed that social media advertising is the promotion of organisation products and services in social media handle. Organisation can pay for sponsor ads in social media or simply keep on updating their social media handle to increase interaction among customers in the social media handle. Social media advertising present unique opportunity to organisation to reach a targeted audience at a minimised cost (Kotler & Keller, 2016). The author noted further that social media has gone through stages of development in the past few years and it is expected that its growth will stabilize over time.

The success of social media in advertising organisation products and services depend to a large extent the proper understanding of what appeal most to the social media users. In fact, Goldfarb (2011) noted that social media updates of the organisation should be well enticing and appealling to convert the needed traffic the organisation is seeking.

2.2.4 E-mail/ Newsletter Marketing

E-mail marketing appear to be one of the most sucessful platform of advertising an organisation products and services. It invloves sending customers (subscribers) e-mail regarding the organisation products based on their previous browsing history. According to Short (2012), the report from Direct marketing Association reveal that e-mail marketing is the most paying online marketing platform as it saves advertiser about $44 for every $1 spent. Organisation like Amazon - the online e-commerce giant have over the years utilize this particular marketing tools to increase repeat purchases of their products.

The organisation design a customized e-mail to its customers based on their past browsing and purchases history. Products and services are purely recommended to individuals based on the past history (Short, 2012). The advantage of this process is that it reduces the annoying nature of the e-mail to the consumers as they are actually served with what they need and it act more like a reminder. Short noted that while preparing e-mail marketing the organisation should have in mind that they are educating their customers or prospective customers about their products and services and as such must be rich and detailed. It should be able to highlight the organisation key strategic offer (Pawar, 2014).

2.2.5 Blogging

Blogging has overtime become one of the most popular form of marketing organisation products online. Recently, marketing experts as well as SEO experts started advocating for organisations to incorporate blog into their website where they will discuss the organisation products. The argument is that when people seek for information regarding a keyword concerning the organisation products, Google will index the organization URL in their search result thereby advertising the organisation product invariably. An organization blog provide the organisation with unique opportunity to interact with its customers, learn more about the customers buying behaviors, provide the customers with detail information about the organisation products and services.

Kotler & Armstrong (2012) have earlier noted that the more information the customers have about the organization product and services the more likely they will patronise the organisation. The fact that blog enable consumers to easily comment about organisation products and services, organisation work hard to keep their products and services at the highest quality thereby providing more value to the customers. Freelancers have equally used blog for advertising purposes. They publish contents and provide space for advertisers to advertise to their reading audience and have become among the leading source of income online.

2.2.6 Mobile Advertising

It is all marketing activities displayed through wireless devices like smart phone, tablets among others. The leading advertising company is Google App, Apple Apps, Galaxy Apps among others. Google still remain the largest mobile marketing earner (Ovijidus, 2018). The advert may take the form of static or rich disply ads. With the rise in mobile users throughout the world, mobile adverts have become one of the unformidable advertising platform" Several Apps developers are making million of dollars from their Apps and spend a lot to advertise the Apps. The success of mobile Apps advert depends largely on its ability to display a clear message about the organisation products and services.

2.4 Integrated Marketing

Integrated marketing has been variously defined based on certain factors. In this section, the researcher will provide review of popular definition of I MC and what differentiate each one of them. The most popular foremost definition of IMC is that provided by American Association of Advertising Agencies. The agency define IMC as “a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines - general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public relations - and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communication impact” (Schultz & Schulz, 2004).

Their definition sees IMC a holistic marketing plan that combine not just the basic four promotional tools but also other marketing tool to achieve a consistent and unified marketing communication plan that drives the organisation product. Their definition is unique in that, it sees IMC as marketing plan and not just tool. The marketing plan works better together in achieving the needed result. Kliatchko (2005) noted that the definition lack some elements in it, such as, measurability and creativity, cost-efficiency, consumer orientation among others and noted that the definition is inadequate. Another definition was put forwards by Duncan & Caywood (1996, p. 18), where they see IMC as “the process of managing all sources of information about a product/service to which a customer or prospect is exposed which behaviorally moves the consumer toward a sale and maintains customer loyalty”. This definition place emphasis on the process of getting information across to the customers or prospective customers and how it changes consumer buying behavior to the product or services. The definition as pointed out by Kliatchko (2005) leaves out the fact that IMC is also a concept and never include the measurability aspect of IMC.

Duncan (2005) later revised the definition put forward earlier to accommodate other forms of marketing promotional tools other than those the marketing managers want to employ at that point in time. He then defines IMC as “the process of strategically controlling or influencing all messages and encouraging purposeful dialogue to create and nourish profitable relationships with customers and other stakeholders”. Here stakeholders to the business are included in the definition to accommodate all other interest group in the organisation (Kliatchko J. , 2005). Schultz & Schulz (2004) definition of IMC is similar to the one put forward by Duncan (2002), they see IMC as a strategic business process that facilitates planning, developing, executing, and evaluating a coordinated measurable and persuasive brand communication strategy for consumers, customers, prospective customers, internal and external stakeholders audience. The definition also omit the fact that IMC is also a concept in the definition, though, it addresses most of other issues raised in the other definitions of IMC.

Kliatchko (2005, p. 23) definition of IMC as “a concept and process of strategically managing an audience-focused, channel centered, and result-driven brand communication programs over time” is short and more detailed definition of IMC. The definition highlighted four key things, first, that IMC is both a concept and a process. Secondly, that IMC should be audience- focused, a good IMC should have a particular target all the promotional tools are directed at reaching with same message in every platform. Thirdly, IMC should be channel-centered, there should be clear differentiation of the various medium of reaching the targeted audience. And lastly, IMC should be result-driven. It should be directed towards changing consumer buying behaviours and should be measurable based on the changes in the organisation sales level. In general, integrated marketing communication is a holistic management strategy and meta discipline that focus on optimizing the organization wide optimizing value chain to stakeholders that involves the planning and execution of all marketing related activities of the organisation whether online or offline in a way that is consistent across all customers, consumers and stakeholders of the organization with the intent of impacting the buying behaviour of the consumers on the organisation products and services.

2.5 Promotional tools of Integrated Marketing Communication

There are five basic tools (advertising, public relation, sales promotion, personal selling and direct marketing) employed in integrated marketing whether online or offline. And organisation ability to integrate the tools together will achieve the maximum result. According to Oladele (2009) marketing communication serve four basic purposes, to differentiate organisation products from other competitors, remind the targeted audience about the product, to inform the target audience about the existence of a product and to persuade the audience to take some set of actions like buying the products or ordering for the service. The tools are discussed below.

2.5.1 Advertising

Belch & Belch (2004) sees advertising as any form of paid non-personal promotion, presentation with the intention of influncing the purchasing behaviour of the consumer regarding the products or services being advertised. The author noted that it serve products to consumers at low per exposure cost but a high overall cost. Consumers often see organisation that advertise their products as quality products and services (Caemmerer, 2009). Caemmerer (2009) observed that advertising are best used when the targeted audience are generally dispersed across different geographical location. Advertising ussually appeal to consumer when carried cosistently and often within an interval of time, as consumer tends to believe that well advertised products must have unique value it tends to offer.

Advertising could be in the Print media like Newspaper, it could be on TV, Radio among others. It could even be on billboard. Some organisations in Nigeria for instance, involve in painting people wall close to main road with the products thereby providing constant reminder of the products to the targeted audience. Pawar (2014) observed that advertising allow organisation to message their targeted audience with same message over and over again. Also advertising does not irritate or pressured consumer as they are free not to react to the advert.

2.5.2 Personal Selling

Personal selling is another popular promotional tool employed by the organisation to get their products and services to their targeted audience. It is a person to person promotion aimed at informing, inducing and influencing the buying behaviour of the consumers. Oladele (2009) noted that personal selling is a form of personal presentation carried by the organisation sales force with the intent of making sales and building customer relationships" Pawar (2014) observed that personal selling is a form of word of mouth and mostly effective for building buyer preferences for the products or service, convincing the consumer and inducing their buying behavior for the organisation product.

A personal selling could be in the form of office-to-office selling, door-to-door selling, public rally selling, it could be in fund raising dinners or even street to street selling where an organisation representatives visit people in their home and market their product. Caemmerer (2009) believed that it is a form oral presentation with one or more prospective buyers for the purpose of making sales. Pawar (2014) identified three major distinctive feature of personal selling including an immidiate interaction between one or more persons, it often encourage establishment of personal and more close relationship between sales representative and customers and lastly, personal selling often makes the consumers feel emotional to demand for product based on the already interaction.

2.5.3 Sales Promotion

Sales promotion is a long sales strategies employed by organisation to encourage short time sales boost of the organisation. It involves the use of short term incentives to intice consumer to patronise the organisation products. It could come in various form like coupons, contest, premium, one for more among others. Oduwale (2009) noted that sales promotion could also involve the display of trade fair or auction bids. Basically, there are two form of sales promotion, consumer-oriented sales promotion and trade-oriented sales promotion. Consumer oreinted sales promotion is diredted at inducing consumers of a product to buy more of the product while trade oriented sales promotion is geared towards encouraging the channels of distribution to buy more of the product.

Although, this two basic classification of sales promotion have been critisized by several authors (Kliatchko J. , 2005) and another third form of sales promotion has been added which is employee sales promotion. This type of sales promotion is used to encourage employees to put in their best and work towards selling more of the organisation products.

There are several reason an organisation can engage sales promotion. Organisation can engage in sales promotion to boost short time awareness of their new product and services, to draw quicker response, to attract customer to switch over, to reduce fluctuation in demand for product, increase customer loyalty and stronger response from the buyers. Pawar (2014) noted that there are three distinctive benefits of sales promo; quick access to action, it incorporate incentives that can easily attract customer interest, and they come with invitation of immidiate action on the products or services.

2.5.4 Public Relation

Public relations stand out to be one of the most effective promotional tools out there. It is an indirect promotional tool that is designed to improve the image of the organisation positively in the minds of the consumers. Belch & Belch (2004) noted that public relation is a form of delibrate, planned and sustained effort by the organisation establish a positive image of the organisation and maintain a mutual understanding with the public. Good public relation does not just occur by accident, it is a delibrate plan of action by the organisation to influnce the opinion of the public about the organisation and to also maintain coordial relationship with the general public.

Orasmäe (2017) observed that public relation does not just aim at establishing and maintaning good relationship with the organisation consumers but also to maintain a sound relationship with all the stakeholders of the organisation, the community, government, suppliers and even the employee. The author highlighted some objectives public relation aim at achieving which include; to reduce negative publicity against the organisation, to raise the company profile and forge stronger, effective and cosnsitent customer-supplier relationship.

2.5.5 Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is any effort made by any organisation with the intent to get immediate response and measure the impact of the promotion on the products. Orasmäe (2017) noted that it any form of direct communication to a specified individuals or group of individuals designed to generate immidiate response - direct order, request for further information - generating lead of action, make a direct move by checking more of the organisation product or services. It is a common strategy employed by content and SEO marketers, where they directly send e-mail to their prospective clients giving them details about their service and asking them to order in other to enjoy the service provided by the organisation.

Direct marketing could be in the form of telephone marketing, direct e-mail send to the customers, online marketing among many others. With the growing usage of the internet, online marketing is no longer classified as a form of direct marketing since it provide online avenue for effective utilization of other promotional tools. The integrated marketing communication tools effectiveness in creating brand awareness and inducing consumer purchasing behavior is summarized in table 1 below.

Table 1: Characterristics of IMC Promotional tools

Abbildung in dieser leseprobe nicht enthalten

Source: Oduwale, 2009

2.6 Steps Involved in Developing Effective IMC program

In this section, the researcher will discuss the various steps involved in effecting an effective integrated marketing communication.

2.6. 1 Identify the Targeted Audience

The first step is to clearly identify a target audience the communication plan is aiming to reach out to. Pawar (2014) noted that organisation designing IMC should have a clearly target audience in mind that incorporate prospective customers, current customers, influncers, a particular group, or even the general public. The audience also determine what the organisation will say, how, where and whom to say to what. Pawar (2014) noted that a clear definition of target will help the organisation know whether the target audience is loyal to the organisation or to the competitors, the extent the individuals are using the organisation products and services. There is need to have clear understanding of your target audience demographic characteristics like age, education, income, gender, and geographic characteristics in the form of locations of the target audience. This will help to determine the appropriate means of reaching the target audience (Caemmerer, 2009).

The fact that the target audience might have a particular understanding about the organisation products implies that any effort to integrate the promotional mix will only be effective if the message is designed to address the need of the targeted audience (Belch & Belch, 2004). Pieton & Broderick (2005) noted that what appeal to a particular set of consumers might not appeal to other segment and further re-enforce the need for a clear target while designing IMC.

2.6. 2: Definition of the IMC objectives and goals

This is very important aspect of the IMC. A clear and concise objectives well communicated to everyone in the organisation will help the organisation to achieve effective integrated marketing objectives. Pawar (2014) revealed three categories of objectives the organisation might be using while developing and integrative marketing communication plan. Your integrated marketing communication plan should be able to answer the following questions; is the organisation trying to create more brand awareness, trying to increase its sales revenue, develop and build more customer relationship? Once the organisation clearly decide on what the aim and objectives of the IMC then it can be measured^ evaluated and controlled by the marketing team (Helen, 2018).

2.6. 3: Crafting a Clear Message

At this point the organisation design the message to be past to the general public. In most cases organisation use different medium to source for the most enticing message. Some organisation even ask brand loyalist to compete for the right message where the winner are rewarded financially. Pawar (2014) observed that a clear and unambigious message should get attention, interest, arouse desire and leads to action on the part of the audience. Though in practice, not all message lead to action but a good message will surely induce one of the actions listed above. Following factors are noted;

The message communicator have to decide on three major form of appeal. The rational appeal, which appeal to self-interest of the consumer. And this is achieved by highligthing the wonderful feature of the products or service. The second one is the emotional appeal, which is aimed at steering positive emotion about the organisation products. Positive emotional appeal like love, joy, meekness might attract more customers (Pawar, 2014). Lastly, is the morality appeal which appeal to individual sense of what is right for the society like clean environment, equality among others.

The message structure has also been identified to play crucial role. The message structure could be whether to follow a conclusion oreinted message, one sided or two sided message and lastly to present the strongest argument first or last. The format of the message is also assumed to be very important. Of course the audience of the message also play an important role in decision regarding the format of the message.

2.6.4 Decides on Channels of Communication

Not all channel work for certain target audience. Everyone don’t need to be on facebook, magazine. Organisation should be able to ask themselves, which channels are my customers familiar with? How effective are these chennels in reaching my goals. Pawar (2014) indentified two major channels of communication - the personal and non-personal channels. The personal communication channel are those channels that involve communication between two or more people whether on phone, email or any other medium. Non-personal communication channels includes the media: print media, broadcast media, electronic media, bill boards and are msotly from paid media (Jennifer, 2014).

2.6.5 Ensure your message are integrated properly

Regardless of the channels the organisation opted for, it should ensure that the message are clear and convey the same meaning across board, targeted at achiving same goals and objectives and directed towards organisation strategy. Pawar (2014) observed that a well synchronised campaign message across different channels online, whether via e-mail, social media advert, search engine optimization, sales promotion among others should convey the same message and aimed at achieving a particular objectives like increasing sales, creating brand awareness and many more.

Organisation should ensure that all the marketing team regardless of their projects, work together for the achievement of the overal objectives and goals. If organisation is using different advertising platform, the message should also be uniform and consistent (Jennifer, 2014).

2.6.6 Evaluation/Feedback

The success of the campaign can only be ascertained if there is a metric put in place to measure the success of the promotion. Organisation should therefore collect data in real time as the campaign is ongoing. This will facilitates an understanding of the performance of the coupon, promo codes across different channels. There should be an open channel across the various platform to provide feedback as the campaign progresses.

This section of the research have provided extensive review of literature on online marketing; its meaning and scope, categories of online marketing and how effective each has been over time. Literature was equally reviewed on integrated marketing communication, its form and steps involved in implementing integrated marketing communication plan over the years. It is interesting to note that most organisation as revealed in the literature reviewed are yet to embrace integrated marketing approach especially online partly because they don’t have the requisite knowledge to execute such plan as discussed in this chapter or partly because they don’t have sufficient knowledge about its benefit as will be discussed in the next chapter.

What is unique about this research? This research work is ncessary considering the fact that internet in particular and information technology in general has continued to revolutionäre the way organisation operates and build customer relationship, thus the need to investigate the role of online marketing on the effectiveness of I MC in an Africa market. Secondly, most organisation especially consumer goods and general manufacturing organisation are yet to fully embrace and tap the potential benefit that lies in the usage of internet in an integrated marketing communication framework (Pawar, 2014). Thirdly, no study known to the researcher have investigated the effectiveness of online marketing on I MC in Africa or Nigerian market, thus, the need to investigate and see the extent Nigerian organisation are adopting the internet in their I MC effort. Lastly few of the studies who have investigated the study in India (Pawar, 2014; Rahul, 2016) and Sweeden (Lundgren, 2004) have some methodological issue which raise eyebrow about the findings of the research. For instance, Pawar (2014) studied effectiveness of online marketing on IMC and uses case study design and the sampled organisation customers. The problem with this work is that customers might not have sufficient knowledge about the organisation IMC as such might lead to misleading findings. Lungren (2004) sampled only three marketing manager which is rather argued to be too samll to provide a generalized conclusion. To close that gap in methodology, this present research will limit the sample to the organisation marketing and sales employees. Their choice is based on the fact that they have sufficient knowledge about what the organisation marketing program look like and how effective it has been based on the various parameters that will be discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER THREE

3.0 Introduction

In this section, the research will examine literature on the effectiveness of online marketing in an integrated marketing communication environment with the intent of discovering whether online marketing have made integrated marketing communication effort more effective or not. Similarly, the section will also examine trends on online marketing.

3.1 Role of Online in Integrated Marketing Communication

Business environment is changing so is the tool employed in the management of business. In the field of marketing, marketing communication is evolving and changing, there is rise in new tools, theories, techniques, technological changes, and cultural dynamics all combine to create impact on the way marketers are communicating their message to the targeted audience.

3.1.1 Online Advertising

Like the traditional offline advertising that uses broadcast or print media in advertising effort, organisation advertising their products to reach their targeted audience should consider internet as they would television, newspaper, radio, outdoor and others (Strauss & Raymong, 1999). Markova, Prajova & Salgovicova (2011) observed that there are two approach to advertising online; first is the text based approach that employ e-mail and bulletin board and the second is the multimedia approach that utilizes banner, interestials, sponsorship, buttons among others.

E-mail Marketing: The text based e-mail marketing is similar to the traditional mail send across to organisation customer offline. E-mail have several advantages over the traditional mail send across the customers. First is the fact that e-mail permit sending of mail across to the customer at no cost compared to direct mailling that organisation pay for poster service. Secondly, in the e-mail quick response from the customer can be achieved since the organisation often attached link to the e-mail back to the organisation website where transation or registration can take place. E-mail can easily be gotten while customer visit website for any transaction or from the organisation brokers. E-mail remain a powerful marketing instrument today in the hand of tech giants like Amazon. Amazon for instance, use e-mail to recommend products to customer based on their past shopping experience. It is used extensively by most organisation to collect survey on how to improve the organization services to the customers.

Banner ads: This appear to be the most commonest multimedia advertising medium on the internet (Devi & Konti, 2011) . It is used to create awareness about a product or services and sometimes used as direct marketing. Banner ads and button ussually ocupy a position in the website like normal print media and link is attched to it to get to the advertiser website where the transaction or the very action takes place. It was the most popular form of advertisement online but emphasies has shifted from it largely because of its low performance (Belch & Belch, 2004). To increase banner effectiveness in advertisement, most marketers use selective targeting as design factor, and the more the design and position the ads the more it reaches the targeted audience (Belch & Belch, 2004). One unique feature of online in advertising is the fact that in print media advertising, action are delayed and so the focus is to create awareness but in online advertising, awareness are created and also leads to immidiate action from the customer through the link attached to the banner.

Sponsorship: This is yet another powerful tool in advertising on the web. It popularity increased over time due to low performance of banner advertisment (Strauss & Raymong, 1999). It is a situation where the advertiser pay for a particular web page or s section of the web page and could take part in providing the content or the site simply provides the content as a whole and have it approved by the advertiser. This is also common in print media where a page is dedicated the website. The advantage over traditional print media is that they ussually last for a while and that all, but with the internet as long as the content is relevant people will keep on seeing the content (Markova, Prajova, & Salgovicova, 2011).

The advantage of online advertising over the print media or broadcasting media like television is the ability of the ads to be align with what the targeted audience is interested at that point. For instance, in television program, an advert might be totally different from what the viewers want to see but not with online marketing (Strauss & Raymong, 1999). The web further allow effective integration between information seeker and transaction. Internet user can immediately respond to an advert and purchase in the sponsor website bridging the thinking minute’s offline multimedia don’t offer. Lastly, online create a multi communication channels where user might respond to message and another respond to its message creating whole lots of community.

3.1.2 Online Public Relation

Public relation is part of the marketing promotional tools employed by the organisation to create awareness of its products and services to several stakeholders. Markova, Prajova, & Salgovicova, (2011) observed that its role is to look after the nature and basis that define external relationship between the organisation and the various stakeholders. It is üssed to create goodwill message about the organisation to all its major stakeholders; the employees, media, finanvial institutions, shareholders, community, suppliers, government among others. The objective is to create positive image about the organisation on the mind of its stakeholders. As such, every content in an organisation website other than advertising, sales promotion is public relation (Strauss & Raymong, 1999).

The organisation brochure ware are made available in the company website where the organisation provides the consumers details information regarding a particular product, similarly press release of the organisation can be provided to the media while annual report are provided to the investors. An investor does not need to visit the organisation before having access to the organisation financial report with the internet (Hughes & Fill, 2006). Giving the fact that very few individuals still watch Television and read Print Newspaper, organisation must therefore invest in information technology establish more personal relationship with its many stakeholders.

Strauss & Raymong (1999) observed that dialogue, borderless communication, inclusive and continuos communication is the basis of effective value delivery and building Strang personal relationship with the stakeholders online. Twenty first century organisation are engaging all its stakeholders particularly the internal (employees) and external customers in a dialogue to determine what the customers want and how the organisation can get it done. Because of global integration through the internet, organisation should properly design its message to cut across all culture. Organisation goodwill message should start from the employees as an adage says “charity begins at home”, selling the message to the employees first will make it easier to sell to other stakeholders.

3.1.3 Personal Selling Online

As the internet has become a powerful tool in the hand of most e-commerce organisation for personal selling, it has become a threat to many involved in persoani selling especially those involved in business-to-business market. However, most organisation in B2B have viewed internet as even opportunity to increase their coverage and presence by maintaining strong online presence. Some organisation have even cut down their workfoce largely because of poor reach with the emergence of online personal selling (Markova, Prajova, & Salgovicova, 2011). The internet has become a great source ofinformation forthose in business-to-business market especially those of them that are in supply chain industry.

As individuals visit organisation website, interact with the organisation providing a lead, an individual sales person can be assigned to follo-up the visitors which then become a sales prospect. Most business to business organisation especially advertising agencies and other business supportive service providers follow-up organisation until they are convinced to patronise the organisation. The advantage is that it minimise cost as the sales respresentative does not need to travel to talk to the client about the organisation products or services (Hughes & Fill, 2006). Most organisations are already implementing free trial version of their products or services online which after the consumer is satisfied with the product will likely order for a product and sales person is assigned for a follow-up.

Strauss & Raymong (1999) noted that in a well designed integrated marketing communication plans, online presence facilitates personal selling and gives the sales representatives to reach more individuals with the organisation products and services. Although, some researcher have noted that internet does not fit in very well for personal selling but for providing supportive role to personal selling activities offline.

3.1.4 Sales Promotion Online

With the rise in e-commerce, sales promotion activities has increased drastically online. Sales promotion instruments includes coupon, rebates, free or low cost gift, contest, products sampling among others. Strauss & Raymong (1999) obsered that unlike the offline sales promotion that is directed to retailers in the chennels of distribution, sales promotion online are directed to consumers themselves and the impact of the sales promotion can therefore be easily measured based on the level of interaction in the website.

For instnace, most of the online service providers like the software producer organisation often gives free sample to the consumer for test over a specified period of time after which they are required to pay for the product or service if they so wish to continue using the service. Organisation also uses contest for a product or gift to keep their customers or fan based exicited and interacting in the website. It could also be a sweektakes where there is no contest but a thing of chance thereby making the website stakeholders more exited over time (Milton & Westphal, 2005).

3.2 Measuring effectiveness of Online Marketing in IMC Framework

By effectiveness of online marketing in integrated marketing communication framework we mean the extent online success in online marketing can be measured over time by the organisation.

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Study of the Effectiveness of Online Marketing on Integrated Marketing Communication